Data Driven Social Media Marketing Insights

The Ultimate Guide On How To Manage Social Media Privacy Settings

Are you worried about your online privacy? Have you checked your privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram recently? As a marketer, we are using social media to promote our business. However, we still need to be conscious of our privacy. In this day and age, it is all too easy for hackers to get a hold of your personal information. It is from this theft they can take away control over your profile.

In this post, you will find out how to manage social media privacy settings so you can share only information that you want people to know.

Why do you need to check your privacy settings?

The photos and content uploaded to the social media platform are not always secure. Therefore, it is vital to learn and understand how to use the privacy features your social media sites have to offer.

You have to bear in mind each social media platforms has its own settings and some are more complicated than others. We’ll go through privacy settings for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Privacy tab, your profile, and photo settings are three places to set privacy settings. Let’s take a look.

1. Facebook Privacy Tab:

You can access the privacy settings by clicking the down arrow in the right portion of your Facebook. Simply click on the settings and then select "Privacy Settings" from the list of options. First of all, change the default setting on your post under "who can see my stuff?" There you can share the things with the public or with friends. You can also manage the privacy at the time you post on your timeline by using the audience selector. This control "remembers" your changes, so future posts will be shared with the same audience unless you change it.

It has also a feature that many people don’t know about. It is the capacity to limit the audience for old posts on your timeline. For example, let’s say you were posting publicly every time on Facebook and you want to improve your security. Click the Limit Past Posts button. As a result, the content on your timeline you’ve shared with friends of friends or public will change to friends. However, there may be people who have already expressed interested in the post. Those who have liked, commented or been tagged in them may still see the post as well. Additionally, you have the option to individually change the audience of your posts. Just go to your post that you want to change and choose a different audience.

There are few other things you can adjust, such as choosing who can send you a friend request. Also, you can determine who can look you up. This includes your personal information like an email address and phone numbers used to find you. Moreover, if you want to adjust who can tag you and who can see what content you are tagged in, go to "Timeline and Tagging".

2. Facebook Profile Settings:

Next, you must update your privacy settings on your Facebook profile. Go to your profile and click on "About". Here you will see your basic information. You will see various sections like work, education, contact, family and relationship, life events and so forth. In each section, you will find a number of items in it. Each item has a privacy setting. If you want to make necessary changes, you need to click the edit icon on the right side of each section and choose who can see the information public, friends or custom.

Here you can customize each section within your profile, so your privacy is set to your comfort level. For example, if you want your work and education publicly known or if you want to hide your contact and basic information, you can set according to your requirement.

3. Facebook Photo Settings:

At last, adjust the privacy settings for the photo section. You can set your photo setting in a two ways. The first is by album and the second is by an image. If you upload photos into an album directly, click the audience on the bottom right side of the album to set privacy. For albums with images you have uploaded individually, you need to click each image and enter the privacy setting there.

Twitter’s privacy settings are very simple. Either you have a private account or you do not. By default, the "protect my tweet" setting is off. Respectively, this setting allows everyone, whether it is your follower or anyone searching Google, to see your tweets. Hence, to change the privacy settings on your Twitter account, go to your setting menu. Just click security and privacy below the account option on the left side of the screen. Select "Protect My Tweets" if you want to approve each follower instead of allowing everyone to read your tweets.

In addition, Twitter gives the option to add a location to your tweet. When you tweet with the location, Twitter stores that location. You can change the "location on/off " before each tweet. Also, you can also decide whether users can find your Twitter profile with your email address or your phone number. After you have made any changes, make sure you click the save changes button at the bottom.

LinkedIn's privacy setting is little different from Facebook and Twitter. Still, you have some choices. To change your privacy, scroll over your setting buttons in the top right corner and select privacy & settings. There are many privacy settings here, however most deal with how your information is shared on the LinkedIn.

If you want to decide which information people can see on LinkedIn, click "edit your public profile". In order for you to keep all of your connections private, deselect everything.

You can also make other changes under privacy control includes who can see your activity feeds, your connections, unfollow, block people and much more. Simply click the link of the setting you want to change and make the proper adjustment. Most importantly, make sure you save your changes before you navigate away.

Pinterest is also a user-friendly site in terms of privacy. Pinterest wants your pins to be visible to other users so you can get the most advantage from the site. People want to find your pins to re-pin and share them.

1. Search Privacy:

If you don’t want your pin to show up in searches, you can easily change this setting. To make necessary changes, on the right side of your profile go to "Setting", and click on the "Account" setting. Here you will see many elements. You need only to click on "Account Basics", find the "Search Privacy" option and then select “Yes” if you want to hide your profile from search engines.

2. Secret Boards:

If you really want to keep some pins only to yourself, you can create a secret board. To create a secret board, go to your profile. Next under the "Create Board" option you will find an option to create a secret board. Next, simply click the plus (+) symbol to create a new secret board. If you create a secret board, only you and people you invite can see anything you post to it. Here you can create as many secret boards as you want. The only thing that is required is to add a name for your board, description, categories and so on.

Note: You can change the secret board to public but you can’t change a public board back to secret. To go public just select the secret option to no. Change it to public and it becomes public forever.

Just like Twitter and Pinterest, Instagram’s privacy settings are much simpler. By default, everyone can view your profile and posts and tag you in photos as well. However, you are able to make your posts private so that only your approved followers can see them.

Instagram is a mobile-based networking tool. The desktop site has limited features and you cannot edit the privacy of your image there. Therefore, you will have to use the mobile app for changing the privacy settings. Go to your profile page by tapping the user icon on the bottom right of the navigation menu. Tap edit your profile and scroll down.

At the bottom side, you can change the private account on and off. If you set private then only your users can see your photos. Even though you switch to a private profile, your current followers stay the same. In addition, if you want to block a particular follower, find that user’s profile click the settings button. It is located on the top right corner of the page. Lastly, tap to block a user.

Note: Even if you have a private post and you "like" a public post or comment on a photo or video that a public user has uploaded, it is still visible to everyone. Also, you have the ability to remove yourself from a photo in which you were tagged. This comes in handy if you find yourself tagged in a photo you do not want to be tagged in for professional reasons.

It’s your turn now! What do you think? What are the other social media private settings we need to consider? Do you have any recommendations to share? We would love to hear your views in the comment box below.